Kunle: How can online retailers drive up growth, average order value and sales conversions with pre-sales live chat? How can online retailers use and leverage first hand feedback from shoppers through live chat? Should you be using video live chat in your online store? My guest on today’s show, who heads up an online marketplace for ecommerce chat experts, answers these questions and takes us through best practices for live chat in a pre-sales ecommerce environment. Do stay tuned.
Hi 2Xers, welcome to the 2X ecommerce podcast show. I’m your host, Kunle Campbell and this is the podcast where I interview ecommerce entrepreneurs and online marketing experts who will help uncover ecommerce marketing tactics and strategies to help you, my fellow 2Xers and listeners, double specific ecommerce metrics in your online stores. So if you’re looking to double metrics such as conversions, average order value, repeat customers, traffic, and ultimately sales, you are in the right place.
On today’s show, I have with me Joel Feldman. He’s the cofounder and COO of Proonto. Proonto is an online marketplace of ecommerce chat experts. He has, over the last 10 years, hands-on experience in ecommerce call centres, global business development, sales leadership, digital communication, online marketing and customer experience. He is a swimmer and shares a remarkable passion for flattening the world, he’s going to tell us more about it. Welcome to the show, Joel.
Joel Feldman: Thank you very much, Kunle. It’s a great honour to be here. Welcome everybody to the podcast.
Kunle: Could you take a minute or two to tell us about yourself?
Joel Feldman: Sure. I’m Joel Feldman, COO of Proonto.com as you kindly introduced me from Tel Aviv, Israel. I spent, actually, 2 years in Paris, France working and living there, quite a remarkable city. But a few things about myself, I was actually a radio show host in the early days of an Israeli internet radio station. I was a spokesperson for the army when I was 18. I got my first product online when I was 24 as part of digital communication studies for the university radio. And during the past 7-10 years, I would say I’m in ecommerce in sales and business development and this is my first start-up cofounded with my precious friend Tamir Eden.
Kunle: Fantastic. So you’ve lived in Paris, you’ve been a radio show host, you set up a business. How long has Proonto actually been around for?
Joel Feldman: We did the prototyping and testing at nights and over the weekends during 2013 and we actually launched in Q4 2014.
Kunle: Ok, so it’s relatively new. By the way, I was at the IRX exhibition in Birmingham about a month ago and I met Joel there and I was fascinated by his product. It’s basically a marketplace for bootstrapped or start-up ecommerce entrepreneurs who are basically looking to have online chat or presales experts so it’s kind of like a marketplace. He’s going to tell us more about it anyway, I just wanted to let everybody know that I met him at IRX. So what’s the team like behind Proonto, given the fact that you are relatively 6 months from what you alluded to, what’s the team like at the moment?
Joel Feldman: We’ve been working on the company, we had customers already two and a half years ago that basically just launched 5 months ago. As of today, we are a funded start-up. We have the right mix between age, gender and experience here in the team. Leaders in ecommerce, in messaging apps, start-up veterans in technology, folks here from Israel. The head of our merchant ecosystem is a senior in ClickTale, a very big company in user experience optimisation. We also believe in integrating interns so we have top universities that are sending us interns to come on board in business development and understanding about the ecosystem of how to create a company in this day and age. Within our investors, high calibre investors. The main investor to the company was the first investor of WIX. We also have a live person that was a VP in product and a VP in business development for LivePerson who invested in the company as a member of our board. Some Blizzard Entertainment individual, which was a senior in Blizzard Entertainment who also invested in the company, so we’re putting together a really good team to help merchants face their day to day challenges.
Kunle: That’s fantastic. People make up a team and it sounds like you have a really strong team behind you. Ex Shopify, ex ClickTale. It sounds like a very interesting environment there. Ok, let’s talk about live chat and pre sales. Live chat is quite competitive yet I think it’s quite lucrative at the moment. What is Proonto’s current standing in the live chat space? I know you’re 5 months in, but could you shed some more light on what Proonto is doing at the moment in the marketplace?
Joel Feldman: Basically what we do is help merchants scale their sales with a smile. Having live chat software on your website never promises it will be easy and profitable to man it. Also, the big promise that comes with live chat to increase conversion is out of reach for many merchants. The service that we provide and the solution that merchants can get from us is basically we provide merchants with an end-to-end solution that fills the gap that live chat leaves behind. That gap in manning and winning something which we call proactive chat done by experts. We have a community of over 1500 trusted agents for our merchant customers to pick from. The agents have a vertical pay scale, sales experience, culture and language. What we develop and what Proonto is, is a platform that manages this entire process. Anything from sourcing the agents, certifying them to provide support across your retail, or if you are a brand selling directly. In addition to that that platform allows you to manage and scale the live support and basically mid-tier merchants have a dedicated success supervisor as a go-to person and this is where we provide the service and engineer the success of our customers.
Kunle: First of all I like the “Scale the sales with a smile”, I like that a lot. You’ve got 350 agents, as you alluded to earlier and you mentioned the fact that they are categorised by language, you also said culture and there was another factor which comes to play in regards to the agents you have. Could you take us through a use case? Let’s pick any of your clients that would suite a use case as to how they use Proonto on a day-by-day basis. Let’s say we talk about the entrepreneur. What sort of entrepreneur? What kind of store? What kind of store would typically use Proonto? How would they plug pronto in to their shop? How would they use you on a daily basis?
Joel Feldman: The first thing any ecommerce store would do is to add our technology into their site, it’s plug-and-play. From there, they can go to us to get our expert advice on the strategy they want to deploy with respect to live chat. When to man it, what payment program they should activate with the agents in the community. From that point we would offer that specific merchant a variety of different agents from which they can build their team. We would help in the certification process, this is our “secret sauce”. There is a one-time set up that the merchant should be attentive and cooperative with us and from that point the team is up and running with a dedicated success representative from our end. So basically once the chat is manned by the experts that the online store has chosen, the agents are doing the work and supporting customers, getting new data from the customer experience. The merchants are sitting and seeing reports on the metrics that count how the agents are performing, what type of UX issues there are on the site, the demand for the chats, do they need to get more agents up and running and so on?
Kunle: Interesting. So I, as a merchant, sign up for an account, I put my preference, I sell sweaters for instance or cardigans, so I put in my requirements and then do you preselect from the 350 or do I get to choose from 350 agents?
Joel Feldman: At the moment, the number of trusted agents in the community right now is 1500.
Kunle: 1500, sorry. So I preselect from 1500?
Joel Feldman: We have our matching algorithms and also we get a brief from you so we understand what category you are in, what the amount of traffic is that you are seeing, how many hours you would need, if you need it for pre-sale or post-sale, and then we run the marketplace for a search. We would offer all of the community members the opportunity to work on your store, giving the compensation scheme and giving your company profile and from there you will get a pool of agents who show interest to staff your online store and which you can interview and select the agent that you want to work for you as a start.
Kunle: Right, so you’re a marketplace like Odesk or Elance for agents?
Joel Feldman: Exactly. At this point in time, we have over 1500 trusted agents that are available in the community. 47% of them are USA and UK based agents. We also have a big Spanish community for folks that sell in the United States. Agents are ranked based on performance, customer satisfaction and customer and merchant feedback.
Kunle: That’s brilliant. So if I’m looking for my store for UK reps, I can actually find UK reps in the Proonto marketplace?
Joel Feldman: Correct. Even though you would be surprised that many times the brands go more for agents not based on their location, but because after they get to know them a little bit after the interview and seeing their profile, sometimes they choose a person for expertise on their specific vertical or working with a specific market rather than actually being there. We have an example of a UK based agent community that are not even in the United Kingdom. They’re actually, right now, in the United States.
Kunle: This is quite interesting because being a marketplace, you probably have two key metrics you need to watch. A number of customers you’re on-boarding on the buy side and from the supply side, you need to grow the number of agents you have. So how fast is the supply side growing in the business?
Joel Feldman: We’re built for growth and I don’t see any problems in the coming year for the supply side.
Kunle: Ok. Let’s go into the main part of the show where you offer your expertise. What tips do you have for improving pre sales customer service in online retail in general?
Joel Feldman: I would love to share a couple. When you think of optimisation, one thing that I found very useful is to use neuroscience research data. Things like colour, eye contact, in the context of message. For example, built in our technology is video chat that can also be embedded. Basically everything from marketing landing pages, images and so on, eye contact is one of the high standard factors that we are using today. In addition I would say personalisation is very trendy right now and it should be. I just think the message to the stage on the buyer’s journey, understanding “is this is a loyal customer right now that I’m speaking with?” “Is it someone who’s bought before and is coming back?” “Is this the first time they are shopping on my store?” We were surprised for one merchant. The agent explained to us in one of the team meetings we have that the shopper who is in that specific store is actually buying for the first time online. So it was not really about price, it was about the entire experience. It really depends on the vertical but understanding who your customer is and what their needs are and addressing in a way that suits that is something that we empower and also within our platform it tells the agent, for example, the entire customer journey. So which marketing campaign, which page, when was their first visit, second visit, and this is about visitors that didn’t register, so only by cookie data we can get that information that helps agents close the sales. I would say in pre-sales, naming features and benefits is something that a lot of salespeople do regularly. We had an interesting webinar about storytelling and we brought up one of the agents because we have a community in which the agents share specific tactics they have and they find effective with the other agents. An agent explained to us that what she does on a regular basis is use stories from past customers in order to explain a product’s benefits. Rather than naming the features to the customer through chat, she just used the story as an example from another customer. It really helps the customers understand that the message they are receiving right now is relevant to them, which I think is the most important thing to a customer. Is it right for me? Is it relevant to me?
Kunle: Great points there. Colour, personalisation and storytelling to emphasise the features and benefits. I like that transposing when you visualise yourself through other people through personalisation. Now let’s go into the case for live chat. What circumstances lead shoppers to want to use live chat? What is the case and what is the adoption like in today’s world of ecommerce?
Joel Feldman: Live chat is a channel and can be used towards post-sale and pre-sale. It also can be used towards reservations or just communication between friends. In the pre-sale space, it’s about product fit. A good example that we always get by analysing the chats and understanding is the fact that even though people see the product on the store, they see the features, they understand everything about that specific product, sometimes they are asking a question for which the information is already on the site and this is because they want to be reassured that they should go ahead with their purchase. A human touch, a shop assistant that is not sales driven, at least it doesn’t appear like that, is really impacting. For example, a shopper can ask about sizing, headphones for example or apparel, what are the return policies, ecommerce is all about delivery, you see a product in a category and you order it. Many times, the return policies can be a make or break for buying from a specific retailer. Customers want to make sure they are buying the right product for them and keep repeating this because this is actually what we find and understand, this is why shoppers do go and consult a chat representative before completing a purchase and they want a personalised experience. Chat is very effective, for example, if a shopper comes in and he sees that what he needs is not on the policy and he needs something that would be made specifically for them. An example would be an individual that goes on a trip in 2 days and right now he want to buy an additional set of shoes and he wants to know if it will get there before the next day. So they would use the chat in that instance in order to get in touch with the brand, speak with them and get the guarantee that they are receiving a speedy service and this is a way for them to get a speedy service to resolve this type of issue.
Kunle: I can see the application here for reassurance. You’re about to make a sale, you want to find out what the sizing is, you want to get to understand what the delivery is. You could also want to check out some additional features not necessarily mentioned in the description and you want to talk to someone. But how does chat compare to telephones? Why can’t I pick up the telephone or why can’t I use email support? I’d be interested to know how chat compares to phone usage on a website as well as email.
Joel Feldman: We can start by talking about the phone. From the latest Forrester Research it’s almost 50/50. The adoption of live chat has dramatically increased over the past 4 years. In a recent survey, the answers were a little bit more towards phone support. I think as a theme, we all know that customers expect to get a hold of you as a business, as a brand in a speedy manner. Chat allows just that. When you look at phone, one should ask himself what is the nature of the enquiry, because different enquiries go to different channels. We have data that’s pretty fascinating about this. Shoppers, with phone support on an online store of some sort of an ecommerce platform, looking at a specific product, the common shopper, are they able to pick up the phone during work, of they are sitting in a café in a public place and use the phone? Many of them can, many of them can’t. This is how it splits. What percentage actually pick up the phone? It’s important for everyone to understand that when the phone number is available, it doesn’t really mean that a person would go ahead and take an action. With proactive chat it works differently because you put the message in front of the customer before they knew that they needed help, the message is there already. I would say that ease of use, chat is a speedy way to interact with a brand via PC or mobile. If you look at it, proactive chat captures more customer conversation than any other medium, mainly because of ease of use. Human touch is obviously essential to sales shoppers, no phone support is available during working hours, but what about evenings? A brand should ask themselves do they staff or handle inbound calls between 8-midnight? I can comment about interactive voice responders, when you have to call a company and dial a few things before you get a human voice talking to you, but it’s not really a person. It’s great for post-sales, I would say that. The service is amazing for post-sales.
Kunle: It’s expensive also. How many small businesses can compare to Amazon? With Amazon, I just go onto the website and I say call me in 5 minutes, and someone’s going to call me in 5 minutes. The other things to add to what you said is millennials, I think the younger demographic don’t like talking, just chatting on their phones and things. So what about email? How does email come to play?
Joel Feldman: Email support is fundamental and it’s the most basic communication channel for ecommerce. Reactive chat can be faster if you compare between email and chat, but the industry is actually speaking of 300% more conversations when measuring reactive vs proactive communications for sales. Email is great. I think it’s part of the game and it will always be there. I notice that companies approach us when they see that inbound chats close much higher when they do get inbound chats in, they see the potential of sales is amazing.
Kunle: You’re cutting that window of time for “send email, expect response”. Even if the response is fast, I might be on the train at the time and I might be out of network, there’s that delay. I think the chat really cuts down that time decay factor.
Joel Feldman: Exactly, and you get some enquiries about a product and if you compare email and chat, many companies know that chat closes more and this is because of the reason you mentioned.
Kunle: And you still get that email. The last time I used an online chat was in an estore, I got a summary of the entire conversation with the representatives.
Joel Feldman: This feature was originally developed 10 years ago, I think, when chat was made for support. After you got support through chat, you want to get the transcript to your email so you can always go back to the instructions for example on how to plug in your remote control to the TV. So that feature still exists and it’s possible. Some chats occur without even taking the customer information only because it drops the amount of chats.
Kunle: I’m curious to find out about the price point from the data you’re collecting, if you’re collecting data on average order value, let’s put it in US Dollars. What price point or average order value benefits most from live chat? Are we talking a few dollars or are we talking a few hundreds of thousands of dollars from an average order value standpoint?
Joel Feldman: Yes, we do collect data. We didn’t in the beginning, but we started 10 months ago. It really makes a big difference. I would advise anyone to take that seriously. We have a solid answer. An average order value of $150 and up should definitely look into deploying presale chat support.
Kunle: So £100 for our UK listeners. Do you have examples of stores doing a great job at live chat at enterprise level you can share with us?
Joel Feldman: First of all, Amazon. Are you familiar with the Amazon Mayday button?
Kunle: I haven’t used it.
Joel Feldman: Basically, for our listeners, Amazon is giving the opportunity for Amazon Kindle users to press a button and get a one-way video stream of an agent, they did some advertisement on that space. I read recently that Google did a great job with Nexus phones. Customers use Helpouts, which is a platform like Hangouts that Gmail users use, and they put you in touch through the Play Store with a product expert so if you have any questions about the device, you can go ahead and consult a Google expert. That’s a great example I can mention now.
Kunle: Interesting. I’ll definitely check the Mayday and probably do some research on Google Nexus Helpout. At the mid-tier, have you got any examples?
Joel Feldman: I can say that Illuminage, which are a Unilever company, they sell directly to consumers, they also sell retail and wholesale but they also sell directly to consumers on the side. They sell personal care and beauty products. For example, they are giving one-way video chat support to their customers and showing the product, for example tooth whitening products, so the agent would go ahead and show you how it works and would alleviate any concerns you may have, and also about home hair removals, which is a pretty hot category in ecommerce today.
Kunle: It’s pretty fascinating, one-way video chat, that’s reducing a lot of friction, I almost feel like I’m in the store. Is the rep in a controlled environment, with a different background or a branded environment? What’s the experience like?
Joel Feldman: I think it’s easy to set up an environment using a camera which is not attached to the actual computer, and a white wall. Some companies choose to have a very friendly office environment, some just have a white wall. About that point, we never saw a problem with that.
Kunle: I’ve never actually tried video chat but I seems like there’s a take-up with video chat. Shoppers seem to be using video chat. Is that the trend or do they still prefer to type?
Joel Feldman: Video chat is a great way to create trust as part of conversation but our findings, as you mentioned, the kink is one-way video chat. The user can choose to connect with voice or text. Our agents within our solution use a tactic called “snap video stream” to create awareness or to strengthen the connection with the agent to the shopper. But until today, from what we’ve seen, my personal take is shoppers would still rather type and the video is more of a tool to help the company provide a “wow” experience.
Kunle: Let’s quickly talk about scripts. Are you finding a lot of companies on your platform using scripts with the reps? Or do the reps have free reign once they’ve been trained or certified for the store?
Joel Feldman: They are consulting with us beforehand, some companies do have strict rules about it, but according to my opinion, scripts should not be part of the chat atmosphere. There are two schools though, as I said before, and an FAQ widgets is also handy. Also auto completion from common responses, if the agent starts to put a response that they used in the past, it will auto complete it only to get it faster. But automated chats can be very frustrating. When people engage with your brand, they want to feel your brand, they want to hear you speaking to them and not robots. So allowing your staff, be it in-house of if you choose to have different staffing solutions, allowing the staff the room to show empathy and be creative will definitely help you close more sales.
Kunle: It’s a good point you mentioned about culture because you need to retain that tone of voice right across the board regardless of the channel. So I guess that certification period is quite critical to get the voice of the organisation.
Joel Feldman: One word about that. Chat agents, after working for a week’s time in an online store, actually sometimes understand more the customers than the ecommerce manager before. They share they knowledge with them and that helps the ecommerce manager or the online store provide a better shopping experience at the end of the day. The expertise of being a chat agent is about understanding what the reviews are on the store and on the product, what type of things happen on social media and then get that sincere piece of voice of the customer in chat real time really allows the chat agents to recommend changes that need to be done on the site, because expensive UX optimisation tools can give you tons of data but at the end of the day you can get lost with it. If you have one customer that is telling you “I couldn’t see that statement on that specific product” even though you were sure it was visible and there, and if it occurs a couple of times, that’s the best way to get that info.
Kunle: The frontline feedback, the frontline data, qualitative frontline feedback, they’re like your sales rep and they get that feedback and they feedback and you take action. Which brings me to my next question about live chat platforms, how they cross over with these web survey pop under, like Qualaroo. Is there an opportunity in live chat to extend functionality for website surveying? Do you think both platforms should work independently of each other?
Joel Feldman: In Qualaroo I noticed once that there were a few questions and because of the answers I gave, they wanted to escalate to a chat, so that I found really effective. Obviously live chat companies that offer live chat tools must learn what the customer wants and should also reflect it to their customers, but feedback and service are precious tools in learning about who your customer is. My personal note on that is that in chat I think the king is feedback and not complicated surveys. Basically feedback allows you to determine whether or not that specific chat was interesting. Surveys should be attacked, in my opinion, from a different angle.
Kunle: Interesting. Let’s move into specific questions about Proonto. Which of the ecommerce platforms does Proonto currently support? Do you have any plug-ins for platforms like Magento or Shopify? What’s the setup like?
Joel Feldman: We support all ecommerce platforms in terms of data integration and implementation. Our app marketplace plug-ins for Magento, PrestaShop and shopify are in the making, they will be available, I believe, by the end of the quarter. But it’s mainly for distribution, for us as a company, as we already have the benefits of integration in palce, so getting data and shopping cart data as well.
Kunle: I’m just looking at your website now and you’ve got a great UI. It’s an amazing experience. Do you have a dedicated UX or UI team there managing Proonto? How does it work?
Joel Feldman: We have Nathalie, she’s our lead product designer and working on our homepage was a joint work of a few others with the consultants, investors and obviously users. Buy you’re never satisfied with your website.
Kunle: I like the storytelling element there, it’s nice. How many active customers does Proonto have at the moment?
Joel Feldman: At this point in time, we have over 100 stores which trust us and power our solutions.
Kunle: What’s the geographic spread like?
Joel Feldman: It’s mainly US and UK. So 1500 are available at this point in time and about 150 are active. That’s the ratio we want to keep at all times, 1/10 with availability and actives.
Kunle: What sort of stores benefit from this? This is very important because I was speaking to someone the other day, he’s going to come on the show later, he’s a seasoned ecommerce entrepreneur and he talks about experiments, setting up stuff, testing and testing and testing. I think Proonto would make an ideal experimental plug-in to get that feedback and driving the sales and I get feedback. My question has to do with the size of stores. Obviously this is a no brainer for a one-man-band. If I’ve just set up my website and I don’t have the staff to man it on the front end and I really want to get that feedback, I really want to convert, I would use Proonto. What’s the threshold in terms of size of store?
Joel Feldman: I’ll give you a few types of businesses we welcome. If you are a new brand sending directly to consumers through your ecommerce site, are your products new to the marketplace and require explanation, you should definitely come and chat with us. Online retailers with an average order value of $150 and up can benefit sales optimisation and sometimes it will be better to build a team virtually rather than do it in-house. I believe ecommerce should focus on getting new products, getting competitive pricing, doing great marketing, focusing on UX, support, post-sale customers and loyalty, but for pre-sales it’s pretty hard to manage in-house and this is exactly the place that we would offer them great ROI. Bigger retailers that need after-hours of weekend coverage, which as a matter of fact, a lot of shoppers decide to do their shopping after they get back from work and if you close your shop at 6 and you’re not available after that, that’s a problem. If your team is small, as you said before, or our support team cannot proactive chat which is different to reactive chat. With proactive chat, an individual is sitting across the platform getting data from that specific visitor and then use that in order to engage them which no automation can ever do at this point.
Kunle: I think that would really appeal to big retailers, especially the after-hours support.
Joel Feldman: And seasonal peaks as well. You want to have an on-demand solution that’s part of the exponential changes that sometimes we face or change in demand so this would be a good solution for that.
Kunle: Absolutely. I see its application here. So how do you recruit sales agents?
Joel Feldman: We allow anyone to register and after screening, vetting and certifying, about 1 in 4, that is pretty much the average, get to have their profile available. There is a huge demand for this type of job. We have a distributed workforce and this is part of our model. We get people from around the globe to apply and using the screening, vetting and certification, we get the best in class agents to be available.
Kunle: So you open up the net and you start to become quite selective on who you pick and choose. In regards to the training program, the certification program, who puts it together? Is it Proonto or the merchants?
Joel Feldman: The certification process, we touched a little bit about this earlier, is our “secret sauce”. The merchant should cooperate in a one-time set up, this is where we actually create the entire certification process and part of our solution is to scale it. So they only do it once and from there it’s fully managed in the platform. Knowledge base, frequently asked questions, new topics, questions. If, for example, there was an issue that wasn’t covered in the on-boarding process, it will only be addressed once and will be cumulated in the knowledge base. We’re using pretty smart tools here and it doesn’t have to be this way. The certification process starts from understanding the right strategy, getting the right people, being confident with the cost for you as a brand or a retailer, and from there, allowing what we built here to do the job and relying on agents to educate themselves over time which is something that we see all the time.
Kunle: And post-engagement. I’d be curious to find out if there is a customer satisfaction feedback the sales rep, from Proonto, can provide the etailers. Anything standard that pipes in and says “this is the feedback we’re getting”. How is that communication bridged between the sales rep on the front end and the retailer?
Joel Feldman: First of all, yes, obviously post-engagement feedback is not mandatory on the widget, but it’s available, and it’s also reflected on the agent’s profile once etailers want to choose agents that are already in their ecosystem. A good point about customer feedback is it’s really useful to help the retailer understand whether or not I should go ahead and pick this agent or staff for my store. My take on this is that unlike post-sale customer service where the feedback is the most important thing “How was your experience with this brand?” “Are you going to be loyal?” I think in pre-sale where we put our expertise, the metrics which matter most are performance. The bottom line that speaks. So in our reporting, we give our merchant customers a complete oversight on the conversion rate that specific agent has being tested across conversion rate of a control group and the closing ratio that specific agent has with the amount of interactions they have. These two metrics, conversion rate and closing ratio are the two metrics that our merchant customers use.
Kunle: Could you reward the top performing sales rep, for instance, for having stellar conversion rates?
Joel Feldman: We do a lot of things in order to promote and reward the community. Some of the things come directly from the merchants. We have an in-team gamification, we have a guide book on ways a merchant can incentivise agents on top of what’s already being done and we have some interesting prototypes, gamification and real time understanding on when you should offer a reward. It’s not always the commission that drives our agents to perform better, it’s acknowledgement and sense of meaningful. We allow agents to share their ideas, we have an entire community which is offset. It’s pretty interesting stuff, I don’t know if we can cover everything now, but I would love to show you more.
Kunle: It sounds quite interesting. In regards to a sales rep that’s stock, a user case is I’m a sales rep that’s stock and I need help. How can I get straight to the merchant or to the etailer to help me out?
Joel Feldman: We put an app of the contact person on the company’s phone so the agents have access to that communication channel from their dashboard. Nonetheless we also use collaboration platforms, but one thing that is important about pre-sales is the moment that you can say “I would like to put you on hold because I would like to get the best answer for you” and customers actually appreciate when the agents don’t be as them and simply go and try and find the answer. This is where a chat will be stopped for a couple of minutes or so and if there is no answer after a couple of minutes, they would take their email and respond on a regular channel later that day. But usually agents get everything covered be it from the knowledgebase or from some escalation that sometimes needs to be done.
Kunle: Let’s talk about the future of live chat. What is the impact of mobile? Mobile is massive now, it’s here to stay on live chat.
Joel Feldman: I would say customers still leverage click-to-call when they are mobile. It depends if it is post or pre-sale scenario. Personally we don’t believe agents should handle chats when they are on the go. It can work well for micro businesses, if you’re a personal therapist for example, but for agent support in ecommerce, we don’t see they should do it on the go.
Kunle: Coming from a shopper standpoint, I’m on a website and have questions and I’m on my mobile, not on my desktop, from the engagement standpoint what really is the impact of live chat? Do people on the go want to use live chat?
Joel Feldman: From what we are seeing and also within our algorithm which suggests which customers are more likely to make a purchase, we see less recommended shoppers on mobile, even though our platform fully supports even video chat on mobile, which is very innovative, a lot of companies come and try to see how we did that. For browser based ecommerce shops, I think it’s still in discovery, in the education stage. We see less interactions going on through chats, but it’s definitely a metric that we will keep track of.
Kunle: Earlier on, in March, Facebook announced the Business Messenger, and that was pretty much live chat for ecommerce. The complexity at the moment is in terms of trying to roll it out. What do you view the future of live chat with Facebook Messenger coming into this space?
Joel Feldman: About that, I would say very quickly that in 2006, Ebay bought Skype out of the notion that merchants and shoppers would do video chat, and then sold it in 2009. Facebook later integrated video chat into their own platform and also allowed to contact the business through video chat Skype integration. I think it shows where the industry is going. Obviously this messaging space is exploding. Regarding that specific integration, ZenDesk owns a chat company called Zopim, which is pretty common, they are testing with Facebook, but I would say that Messenger obviously makes ecommerce related content more easily shared by businesses and supposedly faster for customers to connect, but let’s see how customers will adopt it.
Kunle: It will be interesting to see if Zopim actually lose data if they integrate with Facebook Messenger in terms of all the data they have access to. Ok, wrapping up, what books and resources about growth marketing in ecommerce and marketing in general would you recommend?
Joel Feldman: I would say for any manager or business owner, I would suggest reading one book that really made a big impact on me. Exponential Organisations. It was written by Salim Ismail from Singularity University. Singularity University is a very interesting project going on in Silicon Valley, a true inspiration. The name is Exponential Organisations, and the author is Salim Ismail from Singularity University. It really tells you how things are going, how to predict, how to understand how prediction can be sometimes misleading and what exponential growth is all about, specifically for your podcast, I’m pretty sure that people will be interested.
Kunle: Scale, scale, scale. I like that. I’ll definitely look at it. What about any tools?
Joel Feldman: I actually found one product named Reactful.com, a great tool that lets you create personalised triggers and reactions in your ecommerce store. It works really smoothly. I think Procter & Gamble are using it on their site. Great tool. I also encountered Nosto, a company from Finland, right now they are based in the States I think. I encountered them a couple of weeks back. I think they are doing a great job in the personalised content for ecommerce and they have a friendly price structure from what I understand.
Kunle: Interesting. I will definitely check out Nosto and Reactful.com. Before you say your goodbye, could you give our listeners a final piece of advice?
Joel Feldman: Contact Proonto today!
Kunle: Nicely said.
Joel Feldman: If you’ve been with us for the past hour, I think we’ve covered a lot of things and there’s a lot to do. You need to find solutions that will make your life easier and let you focus on what you do best, solutions that bring good ROI.
Kunle: Good stuff, Joel. Finally, how can our audience reach out to you if they want to get in touch with you?
Joel Feldman: We would love that. First of all by going to Proonto.com from mobile or from laptop or tablet and chat with us. Our Twitter handle is @Proonto. You can also dial in 0203 355 6299.
Kunle: What about live chat?
Joel Feldman: This is the first channel. You can go to Proonto.com from mobile or tablet or PC and chat with us.
Kunle: It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show, Joel.
Joel Feldman: Same here, Kunle. Thank you very much for having us.
Kunle: Cheers and thank you for sharing your insight on improving pre-sales customer service and ecommerce.
Joel Feldman: Thank you very much and good luck everybody.
Kunle: Cheers, bye.